Joe Biden: The Bull in the China Shop

By Elizabeth C. Economy

December 08, 2013

In the midst of an
already diplomatically challenging trip to Japan, China, and South
Korea, U.S. vice president Joe Biden managed to make life just that much
more difficult for himself. The vice president had a number of thorny issues already on his agenda,
such as advancing the cause of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
discussing how to make progress on North Korea, trying to get Japan and
South Korea on the same page, and most importantly, trying to persuade
Beijing to step back and renounce its establishment of an Air Defense
Identification Zone (ADIZ) that overlapped with the pre-established ADIZs of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan or at the very least, to avoid declaring any new ADIZs.Despite this full plate of unenviable tasks, Vice President Biden
couldn’t resist igniting a mini-media firestorm in Beijing when, in the
name of creativity and innovation, he called on young Chinese seeking to visit the United States to “challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.” He went on to praise the importance of new immigrants to the United States in
reinvigorating “the spirit of America” and reinforced that “stamped in
the DNA of every American” is an “inherent rejection of orthodoxy.”At first glance, his remarks seem at best impolitic, at worst
downright harmful to the overall cause of furthering cooperation with
China. Yet, upon further reflection—which the vice president may or may
not have undertaken prior to uttering his call to arms—his comments
signaled one of the most important policy thrusts of the entire visit.

In fact, Vice President Biden took
on the issue of Chinese treatment of U.S. journalists and media
companies directly in his talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
U.S. media companies have long been stymied in their efforts to report
openly and critically on China for fear of reprisals from Beijing. As
Mark Landler reported in the New York Times, nearly two dozen New York Times and
Bloomberg journalists are awaiting accreditation from Beijing; without
it they will be expelled, effectively shutting down their China bureaus.
The question now is whether the U.S. government will take further steps
to pressure China on this issue. Would Washington be willing to delay
the visas of Chinese journalists? Is there an issue of market access
that could be advanced through the World Trade Organization? It may seem
foolish to risk the overall relationship with China for such issues:
The ADIZ, for example, represents a more immediate threat to regional
security than access to China for U.S. journalists. However, the
political values the vice president is advancing—transparency, openness,
and accountability—in the final analysis are reflected not only in the
way that China does business at home but also in how it behaves abroad.
Biden is right to hold China to account on both fronts.

NOTE-- Elizabeth C. Economy is C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for
Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She blogs at Asia Unbound, where this piece originally appeared.